Susan McGalla Works Toward Equality in the Workplace

There is a great change coming over the business world and it has been as steady and inspiring as you would hope. Susan McGalla is the founder of P3 Executive Consulting as well as the Vice President of Business Strategy/Creative Development for the NFL franchise, the Pittsburgh Steelers. McGalla isn’t just another hard working woman in the business world. She is an inspiration and someone who is actively fighting to pave the way for other women to follow in her footsteps toward high ranking positions in the business industry.

Susan McGalla knows that you can’t get by being anyone other than who you are, she just doesn’t believe that women should be penalized or held back due to ineffective measures. Studies have shown that companies with diverse gender and ethnic workforces are 15% to 35% more effective than their more homogeneous counterparts. In a subtle and sometimes not so subtle way these companies are willing to buck convention and engage in more modern thinking. Still, despite these huge statistics we see that women are contained to a minuscule percentage of C-Level and above positions for S&P 500 companies.

McGalla’s success has been an inspiration to watch because she has found it in a slew of different industries. McGalla worked all the way up to the top of the American Eagle Outfitters brand before ultimately becoming President of the company. From there she went on to found the P3 Executive Consulting company that we mentioned above. It is here that McGalla is working to empower other women to follow in her footsteps. McGalla is taking a different approach to getting women in the workforce and she might have to work a little harder to get people on board as a result.

We find that Susan McGalla doesn’t believe in the initiatives and networks that have become so common in today’s work environment. McGalla reasons that these initiatives don’t actually and actively address the underlying problem that is closing the door to female applicants up and down the higher ranking business positions. Instead, McGalla believes in the power of executive sponsorship.

Executive sponsorships work almost exactly how they sound. Instead of relying on work place initiatives, women leaders would turn to executive sponsors. These sponsors would help in the decision making process, search out qualified businesswomen, and put them into the roles that they can succeed at. The hope is that eventually these sponsorships will fundamentally change the business culture.